Black Garlic – have you tried it yet?

The New Black

By Julie Biuso

Extracts from a post dated FEBRUARY 18, 2015

The skin flakes off in papery sheaths and there’s the shell, glowing like some lovingly burnished piece of swamp kauri, and it cracks open to reveal a cinder-black truffle-like heart: this is garlic noir. A smoky sweet-wood aroma rises up, the texture is sticky, like an unset fruit leather or over-boiled jam, and there are rich plum notes. Sweetness collides in the mouth with jabs of sourness, just like an aged balsamic imbued with woody notes from an ancient barrel. Then comes an avalanche of mouth-filling savouriness, unleashing childhood memories of those spoonfuls of spookily dark molasses-like brown goo scraped from the bottom of an old-fashioned roasting tin. Add bacon, glorious smoked bacon, and slow-cooked leeks, which are magically transformed, as if in some French maman’s 60s kitchen, all bubbled up with cream, and there’s aromas of god knows what escaping from under a pot lid … Whaaah! Stop it! I’ve gotta have some more …

Patrick and Gaye Murphy have been growing garlic in Marlborough for more than 30 years. Their son John is the general manager of their company, Marlborough Garlic Ltd. They recently launched a new product on the market, garlic noir (black garlic). I had a chat with John and Gaye, just before the 2015 harvest.

GM “Yes, this is where we pack. We’re not packing at the moment but the smell stays. There’s a different smell in here … this is where we do the garlic noir. We’ve got two big ovens …”

JB “When did you install the equipment?”

GM “2 years ago. And it’s taken that long to get the perfect product. We threw a lot out as we were testing it, but as we had plenty of fresh garlic available we could carry on until we got it right. The key thing, like with a lot of products, is put good product in and you get good product out. We put our best in, which actually hurts a bit because we could sell that anyway and save ourselves the work! But the product is so amazing, and such a success, we’re sticking with it.”

JM “Basically these are roasting dishes. We could do more than 500 roast chicken at once in here if we wanted to, all stuffed with black garlic of course! We cook the garlic at around 70°C for a month, or up to 6 weeks, depending on the heat and humidity and all sorts of things.”

JB “You take it out and check it?”

JM “Yes, it’s a constant job. We keep a good eye on it. It’s mainly dad and myself running the kitchen on a day-to-day basis. 2 years ago if you had given each of us a recipe for tiramisu and told us to cook it in the oven, well, you can guess that it wouldn’t have worked! The garlic noir can’t be produced to a recipe. It doesn’t work like that. Different varieties have stems in different places and the bulbs retain moisture in different parts of the bulb. We use three varieties and we’ve pretty well got them sussed.”

GM “After the black garlic has been cooked it is dried before cracking – that makes it easier to get the skins off, to break it apart. The whole thing is a departure from growing regular garlic and having a packing shed. It’s a big step forward, and much more technical. We’ve been able to apply some of the things we’ve learnt about packing fresh garlic, but a lot was trial and error. The good thing is that people are getting adventurous now with black garlic, and using it in all sorts of dishes. In Japan, where it’s considered a health product, they don’t do that, they have one clove morning and night, for good health.”

JB “Per person? How do they eat it?”

GM “They just chomp on it. They swear by it. It’s not like eating white garlic, it’s completely different. The essential compound allium is changed during the fermentation process to a super food. That’s what they love about it. It is said to boost your heart health, blood flow, mental clarity and general energy levels, and to strengthen your immune system and protect from premature ageing. And, of course, there are no additives.”